Jazz at the Philharmonic

Jazz at the Philharmonic ( JATP ) was the title of a concert series that Norman Granz produced more than 20 years and with whom he toured the world. Concerts presented first, before swing and bebop musicians who appeared at first in small groups and came together at the end of a jam session on stage.

The first concert in 1944

Norman Granz, had maintained his connections with jazz musicians while performing his military service, where he performed service in the troops, and also further organized jam sessions, but already on a professional basis. He was soon known as a tough negotiator and insisted on three things: fixed payment for the musician, not dancing during the sessions and no segregation in the audience.

1944 were arrested during a riot in Los Angeles and subsequently convicted of murder twenty-one adolescent Chicanos. They were called the " zoot suiters " - related to Cab Calloway's stage suit - and its defense became a cause célébre for the liberals of the west coast, where there is also Hollywood celebrities such as Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth involved ( Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee). Granz decided to use the publicity for the organization of a jazz concert in favor of Chicanos and rented for this purpose was then the largest audience in LA, the Philharmonic Auditorium, had previously occurred only performances of classical music in the. First, the concert "Jazz Concert at the Philharmonic " was called; but since the font size that Granz had chosen so many letters not permit, he let the word Concert fall, and so was " Jazz at the Philharmonic " was born. On this first concert on Sunday afternoon, July 2, 1944 then took Illinois Jacquet (whose high notes on the saxophone, a remarkable success with young audiences were ), Jack McVea, JJ Johnson, Shorty Sherock, Nat King Cole, Lee Young and Les Paul part. For the remainder of 1944 found monthly concerts in the auditorium. The last concert there was held on April 28, 1946 instead of, among others, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Lester Young, then refused the Civic Auditorium, allow more JATP events, ostensibly because the audience began to dance - Granz himself suspected that they had the multiracial audience enough.

The JATP tours

After several similar concerts in Los Angeles Granz began in 1946 to produce tours that took place a year - the first with Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Buddy Rich from April 1946 in California, Chicago and New York. In these events occurred, then for the United States nor a sensation, musicians with African American and European backgrounds together on. Granz preferring to make bookings canceled again instead of the demands of organizers by a so-called racial segregation (also based on the audience) to yield. The participating musicians felt very well treated, both in terms of hotel accommodation as well as making the journey in the first class concerned and as far as possible on the plane instead of bus and rail. The enterprising Granz was his stars for that time assure high and especially regular salaries.

After Feather it only came with three musicians during the JATP tours to serious conflicts: Billie Holiday, 1954 ( they botched a performance at Carnegie Hall, and he had to leave the stage, and she swore at Oscar Peterson, who for the regular star ensemble JATP belonged ), with Lester Young, and the well-known for his violent temper Buddy Rich, who described the concerts in Downbeat as a lot of junk, but a year later ruefully returned.

Jazz at the Philharmonic presented the most prominent jazz musicians of the era, such as Louie Bellson, Ray Brown, Don Byas, Benny Carter, Harry "Sweets " Edison, Roy Eldridge, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Hank Jones, Jo Jones, Gene Krupa, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Flip Phillips, Buddy Rich, Charlie Shavers, Willie Smith, Tommy Turk, Ben Webster and Lester Young. In the 1950s his JATP concerts were very popular and enabled him to build a jazz empire. 1950-1957 found worldwide ( in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia ), about 150 concerts, the tour lasted each about seven months.

Granz did record some of the concerts, which were published on Mercury Records and later on Clef and Verve, at the time his own record labels. In the 1940s, his live recordings of jazz concerts were something completely new. The JATP tours in the United States of America were set in 1957, but ran in Europe and Japan still for another decade, but found no more every year. Also Granz left the U.S. in 1959 and moved to Switzerland. In addition to sporadic JATP concerts he was still active as a jazz promoters and managers, among others, Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. 1967 ended the JATP concerts provisionally with a final U.S. tour ( with Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson ). Granz expressed then as: "Never again. Although I made a profit, but it 's too much work, and above all too much trouble. It 's no fun anymore, at least in the U.S.. "

In the 1970s, Granz had the spirit of JATP events rekindle with jam session - style concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival and the resulting there recordings for television and his Pablo label or in the United States in 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium ( and a Salute to JATP concert at the Monterey Jazz Festival 1971). He made a final tour in 1983 on a Japan tour to mark the 30th anniversary of the JATP performances in Japan, including with Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald, published by Pablo.

JATP in jazz criticism

The JATP - venture was - " received mostly frowning by the critics - despite its success with the public. It has been criticized that here musicians of various incompatible styles jammed together that no arrangements existed, and that the whole thing would go unrehearsed and without finesse across the stage, "said Teddy Doering. Proponents pointed out that in some of the surviving recordings of some of the finest solos of the musicians who participated in have been handed down; so there is from the forties for JATP mainly three concert recordings: the legendary Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday on April 22, 1946; the concerts in New York's Carnegie Hall on 27 May and 3 June, 1946 ( the end of the first tour ) and recordings from the spring of 1947 from Pittsburgh with the famous " How High the Moon" and an excellent solo by Coleman Hawkins. The critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton look at the Carnegie Hall concert in 1949 ( with the front line among other things, Parker, Fats Navarro and Sonny Criss ) and the Frankfurt concert in November 1952 ( with Lester Young, among others ) as highlights of the event series; they spoke Norman Granz ' JATP event on the merit of having encouraged in a difficult period, the interest in the music of the swing and mainstream jazz enormous.

Leonard Feather in 1972 emphasized the importance of the JATP concerts for the recognition of jazz musicians in the United States: younger jazz fans no longer are aware of the extent to which he promoted the recognition, welfare and dignity of the musicians associated with him ... None of the Granz - year may remind doubt that he appreciating the role of jazz from an underground culture that was rarely taken seriously and was mostly off listed in dance halls and nightclubs.

Important albums

• Carnegie Hall 1949 ( Pablo, 1949) with Fats Navarro, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Hank Jones
• Frankfurt 1952 ( Pablo) with Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Hank Jones, Irving Ashby, Max Roach
• The Drum Battle ( Verve, 1952) with Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich
• JATP in Tokyo ( Pablo, 1953) with Charlie Shavers, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, Ben Webster, Ella Fitzgerald
• The Challenges ( Verve 1954) with Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie
• JJ Johnson and Stan Getz At the Opera House ( Verve 1957) with Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Brown, Percy Heat, Connie Kay
• JATP in London, 1969 ( Pablo) with Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, James Moody, Teddy Wilson